People here say much of Poland is still in shock about the tragedy that killed the country’s President, and the delegation accompanying him to a solemn ceremony in Katyn Forest. The President and delegates had intended to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre, in which more than 22,000 Polish officers, intelligentsia and others were killed by the Soviets, in an act that Moscow blamed the Nazis for, until the last decade of the last century.
The streets leading to the Presidential Palace are jammed with traffic, uncharacteristic for a Sunday, as people move to seek news and share grief. The area outside the Palace is a sea of people, lighting candles, laying flowers, writing notes. It is difficult to physically maneuver anywhere near the Palace.
People carry flags. There is a sense of a nation seeking unity and the comfort of others at a time of intense national loss.
The country observed two minutes of silence in honor of the dead, at midday. The Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski and other government officials marked the silence outside the Parliament building.
Seeing the photographs of the dead lined up outside the Parliament is moving. They are mostly official portraits of those who died, some smiling, some looking powerful, some hopeful, others just looking straight out., towards the lens. Men and women. Young and old. Looking at each individual picture really registers the magnitude of the catastrophe, and humanizes it.
I spoke with Waldemar Strzalkowski, an aide to the Acting President. He organized the delegation from the Parliament that traveled on the tragic flight to Smolensk, Russia, near Katyn.
He describe his sorrow and the great loss to Poland, as so many millions of people had cast votes for those who died. He called the Poles a spiritual people, and said he expected them to come together now, and during the upcoming elections, brought forward by the tragedy.
More than one person here has said that Russia’s response to the catastrophe has been admirable, including Prime Minister Putin’s expressions of shared grief. There was some speculation that the fact that the plane crashed in Russia, near a place where Soviets massacred Poles 70 years ago, would spark suspicions or reverse some of the work toward reconciliation that had been done. That appears to have not happened at all. Someone even said Polish-Russian relations were always shaped by the Katyn Massacre, in a very negative way. This tragedy at Katyn and the Russian response to it may, in some way, shape Polish-Russian relations going forward, in a positive light, as two countries together share sorrow.